


Our Corners Start to Curving 'Til We Shine

by Desiderii



Category: John Wick (Movies)
Genre: Assassination Attempt(s), Assassins & Hitmen, Female Friendship, Gen, Hard Choices made on Incomplete Data, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Present Tense, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-16
Updated: 2018-03-16
Packaged: 2019-04-01 05:41:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13991658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Desiderii/pseuds/Desiderii
Summary: Penelope is an apprentice to the once-great Eliza Darlington, and on the eve of her first successful joint contract, Eliza's finally inducting her fully into the world she's yearned to join. For all that Eliza seems forthcoming about the coins and the Archetypes and the Continental, however, her habit of secrecy's a hard one to break. Peppa's first solo contract, chosen by her mentor, seems like it'll be a cakewalk.It is not a cakewalk.





	Our Corners Start to Curving 'Til We Shine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coaldustcanary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coaldustcanary/gifts).



> This whole exchange has been a delight from beginning to end. I'd like to thank [coaldustcanary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coaldustcanary) for the cool-as-heck ideas, and my beta, [percygranger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Percygranger/), for helping me polish them at the eleventh hour. I put in to write for John Wick as a whim, since I've only recently watched the movies, and it's been a joy to poke around and explore concepts only briefly shown or fleetingly mentioned.
> 
> Please enjoy!

Buzzing from shitty airplane coffee and the lingering elation of her first kill, Peppa drags her suitcase through the lobby of _the_ Continental and tries to keep rule number one in mind. _No business on the Continental grounds_ means she doesn’t need to watch her back anymore, but after a whirlwind weekend where all she could think about was business, even a trans-Atlantic flight hasn’t soothed the itch between her shoulder blades.

Peppa’s mentor, Eliza, leads her past half a dozen occupied chairs. There’s a good chance said occupants are some combination of famous and deadly. Peppa’s fingers itch for her phone and her facial recognition software, but exhaustion quashes most of the impulse and propriety takes care of the rest.  

At the front desk, Eliza greets the Concierge, an elegant black man, with a “Hey, old friend,” her Tennessee drawl thick with fatigue.

The Concierge inclines his head and offers her a reserved smile. “Ms. Darlington. I am glad to see you well.”

“Flatterer,” Eliza tells him, fishing around in her purse. “We both look like week-old cat food. We need rooms. And to visit the Tailor. Sweet-cheeks here needs proper duds.”

She means a celebratory suit from the best Tailor in the US of A in honor of her first completed mission at Eliza’s side. Peppa’s heart flutters again, adrenaline surging, sense-memory of pulling the trigger rocketing back up her arm. Her fingers tingle.

The Concierge smiles politely at her.

Eliza places a gold coin on the desk with a _click_ and repeats, “ _Proper_ duds.”

The Concierge pauses just long enough over the coin before he responds that even Peppa figures out he’s surprised. “Then...celebrations are in order.” His hesitation makes it a question.

“They are,” Eliza says firmly, an edge to her voice Peppa can’t read. “I took an apprentice and she’s done good.”  

Maybe it’s an Archetype thing, or just an experience thing, but the Concierge recovers within a breath. “Then a Tailor’s appointment you shall have.” Shifting, he addresses Peppa directly, “An apprentice’s first suit is quite the occasion. Please also enjoy the complimentary champagne that will be delivered to your room, in honor of your success, Miss—?”

Peppa resists the urge to step behind Eliza. “Penelope Whillan.”

“Miss Whillan. Welcome to the Continental. Please enjoy your stay.”

* * *

The map case bounces when it hits the duvet and flips past Peppa onto the ground by the window. Peppa’s head snaps up and she pauses her toenail-painting ritual. “‘Liza?”

“How was the fitting?” Eliza asks, beelining for the in-suite bar. She starts to sort the bottles by alcohol content. The highest percentages get put on the floor as ‘maybes.’

“Amazing. Scary,” Peppa says, capping her nail polish and sitting back against the headboard to wiggle her now cherry-red-tipped toes. “It’s all starting to feel real. The job in Rome. This life. The Concierge, Charon. The Tailor, Hephaestus. The Archetypes are a little terrifying.”

“They’re people too, don’t forget,” Eliza says. She squints at the label of some oddball designer vodka and grunts in satisfaction. The bottle and a glass come with her to the recliner in the corner of the bedroom. “Too professional to bleed if you shot them, maybe, but still people.”

Peppa tucks her knees up under her chin and wraps her arms around her legs. “Terrifying people.”

Eliza just laughs at her. She then reaches into down into her purse at the side of the chair and flicks a coin through the air at Peppa.

Mindful of her toes, Peppa catches it. Gold, like the one used to pay for Peppa’s new suit as well as their night here. This is the first she’s seen one up close; Eliza didn’t bring them out during Peppa’s training.

The coin’s stamped with a mixture of symbols—lion and cross and laurel—as well as a shield motif on each side, which strikes her as hilarious considering her budding profession seems to operate under the “only good defense is a good offense” principle. The champagne she’d gotten into after her fitting just makes it that much funnier, considering the afterimage of that one crucial muzzle-flash still floats in her vision. She covers her mouth and turns the coin over and over.

The first motto emblazoned on the coin is _Ens Causa Sui_. She doesn’t need any fancy philosophical concepts about creating meaning within herself, or after death, explained to her. Not with how often Eliza quoted the phrase while teaching Peppa to shoot. Now at least she knows where the words come from besides Sartre.

“Ex Unitae Vires?” Peppa asks, tossing the coin back.

Eliza catches it mid-air and keeps it folded in her hand. “‘Out of unity comes strength.’” This time when she laughs, it’s at herself, hoarse and bitter. “These coins are the currency of our profession, honored by each and every one of us. They’ve no set value and can mean anything from a task to an object to some other sort of favor agreed upon by both parties as worth the coin. And it’s never a hit, but something generative.”

After a pause, she corrects herself, “Or maybe just sustaining. We’re a community. What we do is important, and we’re all—we’re all in this together. Professionals that respect the agency and choices of others, and the consequences that can imply.” Eliza then takes a long pull directly from the vodka bottle, eschewing her glass altogether. She sits frozen for a long minute, rubbing the coin with her thumb, and Peppa doesn’t dare break the booze- and memory-soaked silence.

Finally, Eliza takes another drink, wipes her lips with the sleeve of her rumpled suit jacket, and continues, “You’ll want them. You can buy them off the Continental, but that’s not in their spirit, and anyway you can’t afford enough to make it worth it until you’re big news. But don’t hide yourself away. Be one of us and you’ll earn them soon enough.”

Peppa nods, a little overwhelmed, and can’t help an earnest,  “I’ll honor them. It’s like...the honor code. They’re our honor code?”

“A physical representation of our honor code, I guess.” Eliza shrugs. “Whatever. The golden rule with a gold standard. That’s not the point.” She squeezes the coin and drops it back in her purse. Peppa follows the movement and is not at all ready when Eliza adds, “The point is that I have a solo contract picked out for you.”

Peppa’s speechless.

“The head of Denver’s Continental gave me right of first refusal, and I decided not to refuse.”

The suit fitting, the coins, meeting the Archetypes here and in Rome, and now a solo contract. So much and all at once, like a single gunshot had punctured the barrier that had held the entire world of Eliza’s life’s work out of Peppa’s reach. Peppa gives her a bright grin and desperately wants to be worthy of every single bit of it. “Then I won’t refuse either.”

“Yeah,” Eliza says, proud and sad all at once. She’s too complicated and swiftly on her way to drunk, but Peppa hasn’t held it against her yet. “Yeah. Get the case. I visited the Cartographer.”

Peppa bounces from the bed and pops open the map case. Schematics. Security codes. Profile information on her new target. Might need all of it. Might need none. “Let me guess. Archetype’s name was...Atlas?”

“Metis,” Eliza says, her smile warming by degrees until the light returns to her eyes. “You would have liked her. She was cute as hell. I should have waited until you were done with the Tailor.”

Peppa laughs and spreads the maps across both beds. “Next time,” she promises and settles in to start absorbing the job information. There’s a few hours yet until either of them can justify sleep, jet lag or no.

Retrieving her glass, Eliza pours herself another generous drink.

* * *

Construction down the hill fills the air with the gunshot strikes of pneumatic nail-guns that will cover the sound Peppa’s silenced weapon. Her breath steams in the chill autumn air and her heart pounds as she casually swings her briefcase onto her shoulder and strides across the parking lot toward her quarry’s office building. Her training-wheels are off, and all that’s left are Peppa, her trusty sidearm, and her sixteen different contingencies.

Late afternoon, the Colorado sun is already slipping behind the Rockies and sending purple shadows to slink their way up the prairie hills toward Denver. The office park on the edge of the city sprawls from the top of the ridge down to the highway below, providing Peppa with several miles of contoured landscaping and pockets of good cover along with dozens of scattered lots full of unattended commuter cars. Presiding over the lots are squat mirror-windowed towers already disgorging the first waves of office workers headed home for the night.

In her new suit, Peppa’s not out of place among the accountants and sales reps—though she does outclass them. She slips through a knot of six or seven in time to catch the building door and they don’t give her a second look. The suit is warm and heavy, and the sleek lines and black fabric make her look like the professional she wants to be—like the professional that Eliza used to be. That the suit is armored, that Eliza made sure she was protected by the best, is a comfort that Peppa would never admit to.

Especially since this particular contract seems like a milk run. Nerves would be unprofessional.

The target is a data entry temp working in one of the satellite offices of a multinational. The price on her head is just large enough to encourage someone in the business to collect on the contract, but only just. Between the laughable idea that filling spreadsheets with disjointed data might constitute a threat and the finality of the threat neutralization that Peppa is about to enact, the whole thing smells of corporate espionage.

Peppa ducks into the restroom and checks her watch. The temp’s name is Suan Fairchild, she loves bright colors, and she clocks out at precisely eight hours or she gets bitched at by payroll.

Time.

Peppa slips into the flow of temps and programmers. Her suit stands out a little more among their jeans and hoodies, but Suan’s ahead of her in blue, gold, and purple and doesn’t look back. Peppa follows her out the doors and into the parking lot.

They head toward Suan’s car, way at the back of the lot where she can get on the road without waiting too long. Peppa stays a handful of steps behind, her reinforced black fashion boots all but silent on the asphalt. She slides her gun from her briefcase, its silencer a bulky and familiar weight, and lets her hand drop casually to her side.

Suan never glances back. She turns to pass between a truck and a van, providing a pocket of momentary privacy. Peppa skips a step to get herself into position before Suan clears the vehicular gauntlet, tracking the bright bob of her purple knitted cap.

Peppa brings her gun to bear. Rounds the bumper of the truck. Fires.

Misses.

The bullet buries itself in the side of a hatchback. Suan is nowhere.

Peppa, heart in her throat, spins in place, then catches herself when she spots her quarry ten steps ahead of where she should be, just past the front of the van and still obliviously heading for her car.

Tucking her weapon away, Peppa makes for a sedan she knows how to break into and jump within a minute. Already she’s berating herself for choosing a casual stalk rather than an ambush, but she’s only on contingency seven. She still has time to get to the first of five ambush points if she doesn’t dawdle. She pops the lock, one eye still on Suan.

Ego aside, she shouldn’t have missed.

Peppa makes the mistake of blinking. The far-off pneumatic nail gun barks and a bullet hole punctures the sedan she’s just opened.

Not the nail gun. Suan keeps her handgun leveled at Peppa and folds herself into her little blue car. A silenced handgun, like Peppa’s. Peppa almost finds out just how armored her armored suit is as a second bullet destroys the sedan’s driver-side window while she stands there shocked. She ducks and vaults the the hood for cover, discarding contingencies eight through sixteen.

Correction: she wouldn’t have missed unless her target knew she was there.

* * *

Adrenaline thrumming through her veins, Peppa has lost track of which of them is the cat and which is the mouse.

Her first solo contract is going swimmingly, the waterline above her head and rising. In addition to having zero contingencies, her quarry refuses to let her disengage. She’s desperate for the missing link, or some inkling as to Suan’s capabilities, something that might give her an edge.

Peppa’s laptop is perched on her knees, the indie coffee house across the street providing her the signal she needs to kick up the database deep-dive software she’d already run and gotten bupkis from before. Her stolen sedan idles as the software runs, and she prays her new parameters bear fruit—or at least produce less shit—before Suan catches up.

Her laptop chimes. A new result. Headlights splash over the car as Peppa keys in the retrieval sequence. Suan has a graduate degree in materials science. The sprawl of new dossier information Peppa would have killed to have before fills the screen.

Peppa doesn’t have time to read any of it. The headlights finally register not as ‘traffic’ but as ‘incoming’ as a car drives straight for her. Suan’s found her in record time, like she’s reading Peppa’s playbook. Every trick Peppa knows, Suan knows exactly how to follow her sleight of hand. Peppa swears, throwing the laptop into the passenger seat. She hits the gas, levels her gun, and fires on the bullet-pocked car barrelling toward her from a cross street. Tires squeal.

A bullet punches through the non-reinforced sedan door into Peppa’s leg and she shrieks more in frustration than in pain. Her _brand new_ suit. Foot off the gas an instant too long because of it, she throws herself sideways and braces for impact.

Suan’s car slams hard into the the sedan’s driver side door. The two vehicles grind their way up the sidewalk and crunch into a concrete planter filled with hardy Colorado grasses. If the sedan hadn’t been toast before, it is now.

Peppa shoots out the windshield and clambers up over the dash and onto the sidewalk. Suan’s fast behind her. Peppa has a lead, but Suan’s legs are longer.

A bullet whizzes by Peppa’s ear and a bystander shrieks.

They’re in public, and Peppa remembers viscerally not knowing the whats and wherefores when the professionals ran by, but knowing still in that vague way that people with eyes and the ability to add can calculate hunter and prey and the nearest exits. Remembers the fear that today would be the day that one of the professionals would make a mistake, even though living collateral damage was so vanishingly rare as to be unheard of. She’d been untouched by the spectral hand of the Underworld then and, because of that, safe.

To be on the other side of that chasm of knowledge is heady. She’s gloriously, electrically alive, even if not for much longer, and a long way from alpacas and clockworks and her family farm. Even now, pelting down the sidewalk, she wouldn’t trade knowing for anything in the world. The bystanders are safe from her, and it’s a safety that’s almost a sacrament.

The shields on the coin suddenly make all the sense in the world.

Suan tackles her and they slam hard into the knobbly brick of a storefront, just missing the glass. Both of their weapons go clattering in different directions. One under a parked car, effectively limiting their options.

Peppa throws a punch. Suan blocks and retaliates. Peppa anticipates and the dance feels almost like sparring with Eliza. They’re well-matched in their mirrored muscle memory.

A lucky kick catches Suan in the shin and Peppa uses the opening to dive for the remaining handgun. Suan’s gun. Same make as Peppa’s. Suan’s a heartbeat after her, but Peppa gets her fingers around the grip first and spins.

Point blank, silencer long since discarded, there’s no way that Peppa can miss now. Suan never stops moving, instead using her momentum to tuck into a smooth acrobatic tumble that, if Peppa had never seen it before, would allow Suan to evade a kill-shot.

But Peppa _has_ seen it before. Eliza had taught it to her, drilled it into her. So she knows precisely where to aim when Suan comes out of it to catch her in the chest right where her heart beats.  

Suan falls hard on her tailbone, snarling curses. Even a blank could have meant death at this distance and here, now, Peppa’s new suit wouldn’t have been able to withstand that shot from this gun.There’s a frayed scar in Suan’s blue-and-gold hoodie, but no blood.

Peppa freezes, half-deaf from the weapon’s report.

They stare at each other, breathing hard, not speaking. Peppa does not take another shot at Suan’s unprotected head.  Their breath glitters in the splash of the streetlight overhead. The sky is still bright above them, a rich azure not yet faded to stars, though the sun’s long since sunk behind the snow-capped mountains to the west.

Suan stands slowly, hands held where Peppa can see them. She approaches, cautious, and gently plucks her gun from Peppa’s grip.

“Take my car,” Suan says.

Peppa does.

* * *

 The bar Eliza haunts is on the corner half a block from their apartment in downtown Denver. Peppa doesn’t bother to change and simply drives straight there in Suan’s car. The other bar patrons take one look at Peppa’s rumpled suit and the flyaway mass of brown hair frizzed into a cloud around her head and quietly turn to face any direction but hers.

Vibrating with fury, Peppa sits down next to Eliza and her half-melted tumbler of whisky, and says, “Who the fuck is Suan?”

Eliza doesn’t look at her. Her shoulders twitch, though, like Peppa has just put a bullet between them, so she’s listening.

The bartender brings Peppa her favorite cocktail and slides it to her from out of arm’s reach. Peppa downs half of it at a gulp and glowers at her mentor until the woman speaks.

“My last apprentice,” Eliza says.

“Fuck you,” Peppa tells her. Her drink is mostly rum, grenadine, and slush, and even though it’s her favorite, she hardly tastes it. She cannot trust her mentor with her life.

“Suan found out the hard way she can’t take a life,” Eliza says. “After she already had the suit and a handful of coins. She’s not like you.”

That gives Peppa pause. “She wanted out.”

“This contract wouldn’t have even been an option if I hadn’t have blithely assumed… I taught her everything on that assumption. I opened a door she didn’t know I couldn’t close. These contract holders now would have had to find a freelancer, or try some other method to get rid of her.”

“Fuck,” Peppa breathes. To end up on the wrong side of the chasm of knowledge, unable to return to not knowing.

For the first time since she’d begged Eliza to take her on, she understands what she has done. She’s wedded the god of Death and accepted the immortality of _‘til death do us part_.

She sits, stunned, and Eliza laughs at her with the same bitter wheeze as in New York.

“You want off the contract, I’ll take it on,” Eliza tells her. “Otherwise it gets thrown wide.”

Peppa shoves her drink’s cherry in her mouth and concentrates on chewing. Despite everything, just like Eliza can’t leave Suan to the wolves, Peppa can’t make Eliza kill her innocent former apprentice.

A shield.

“Let me try again,” Peppa says.

After a long moment, Eliza sighs. “It’s your contract.”

* * *

 The Denver’s Continental, frontier upstart though she’s heard it called by other professionals, employs each of the necessary Archetypes. She’s never met them, and knowing why Eliza held her aloof doesn’t make that sting any less. She doesn’t even know any of their adopted monikers. Still, when she drops Eliza’s name and asks after their Tailor, the Concierge at the front desk directs her down a carpeted hall and a flight of stairs.

The Tailor is younger than the one at the New York City’s Continental, and he’s frat-boy handsome with a Spanish twist to his English. His domain is that of pins and thread, kevlar and carbon-fiber, and he invites her into his fitting room with a smile even though it’s nearing midnight. His eyes linger on the the frayed bullet-hole on her outer thigh.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” he says, lilting the last word up into a question.

“Darlington’s apprentice,” Peppa tells him, dropping into one of the fitting-room chairs without invitation. He’s taken aback, and flutters a little in a meaty, hairy sort of way. She takes pity on him and launches straight into her query, “Do you have any racy little numbers that might handle getting up close and personal?”

His discomfort palpable, he processes her innuendo for a moment, then answers carefully, “I do not normally carry such material on hand. While I would stake my reputation on any of my designs holding up under scrutiny, even my best fabric is limited by the components of its construction.”

Translation? Even the Archetypes’ bullet-resistant suits fail at the range at which Peppa shot Suan.

Peppa extends her leg. “Would you be able to repair this? Or improve upon it?”

“Repair yes. Improve? Had I the full span of my lifetime in experience, perhaps, but I am newly come from my former master’s deathbed. This looks to be the work of New York?”

“Sorry for your loss,” Peppa says, unable to quash her disappointment. “But yes, New York.”

“Then there is no better, racy or not, I’m afraid,” he tells her. “They are the best.”

Peppa wants to repeat Suan’s curses. She hisses, feeling herself about to boil over. “There’s better out there.”

He spreads his hands. “From what supplier? Military won’t complement your lines. Experimental won’t guarantee your satisfaction. Any Tailor worth their apprenticeship would never skimp and offer you shoddy goods.” A shadow of frustration passes across his expression. “What you ask is...beyond my skill.”

Biting her lip, Peppa regards the Tailor. She thinks she now sees what Eliza does when she looks at the Archetypes. She takes a breath, then another.

“I apologize,” she says. “I have no coin and I have wasted your time.”

“I—” The Tailor cuts himself off. “Any time at all in the presence of your beauty can be no waste. It was a pleasure to speak with you, however impossible your request.”

Peppa blinks at him and then down at the grit that peppers her suit and at the black half-moons of her ruined manicure. She decides then and there that the Archetypes no longer terrify her; the Tailor’s rote compliment had sounded entirely sincere.

Slowly, she says, “I shall soon be in need of a Tailor’s skill.”

He regards her, eyes flicking from her face to her leg, and then back. “At which point, I shall grant you whatever is within my power to offer.”

* * *

 Half past three in the morning, Peppa stands in Suan’s kitchen with her weapon trained on her predecessor’s chest. Suan’s wearing the same blue-and-gold hoodie, this time with pajama bottoms with tiny pastel dinosaurs on them, milk in one hand and her own gun aimed slightly left of Peppa’s sternum. She’s stitched the scar in the hoodie up with glittering gold embroidery floss. The whole aesthetic screams hipster chic.

Finding Suan’s safehouse had been a process of elimination as Peppa ran through each of Eliza’s teachings like a checklist. The cozy duplex with its peeling linoleum was only halfway down. Insult to injury, Suan had been sleeping off their evening together. She’s freshly scrubbed, her long black hair braided for sleep, and Peppa stinks of burnt powder and sweat, her suit leg fraying.

But Peppa’s hands remain steady. The only light in the kitchen is that of the inside of the still-open refrigerator, but it’s impossible for either of them to miss at this distance even with their eyes closed, closer even than when she’d shot Suan earlier. They’re a heartbeat away from mutual destruction, and Peppa’s pulse is heavy in her throat.

“I brought you your car,” Peppa says. “What were you thinking, trying to get out?”

Suan answers carefully, as if Peppa were a wild creature in need of soft words and slow movements. “Some have gotten out before.”

“They’ve tried,” Peppa spat. “You’ve seen the result. You know what it cost to try. Even the most legendary of us—excommunicado and the price is still on his head.”

“For my sins, yes,” Suan says, “I know.”

Peppa says nothing. Suan drops her gun-hand to her side and closes her eyes.

After a moment, Peppa lowers her own weapon. The refrigerator light flickers. She steps back, gauges the distance, then takes another long step back. If she doesn’t see this through, Eliza will complete the contract herself, liver or no liver.

She moves a chair and sights at Suan again.

The scrape of wood on linoleum has Suan opening her eyes to stare at her, puzzled, both milk and gun all but forgotten in her hands. “What are you—?” she asks.

“Getting out of the splash zone,” Peppa tells her. “Don’t run.”

Suan’s eyes widen and she half brings her weapon to bear again purely out of instinct. Eliza once trained her as well as she’s trained Peppa. But Suan doesn’t run and she doesn’t shoot. She simply tracks Peppa as she arranges herself on the far side of the table.

Peppa once more aims at Suan’s chest and smiles. “Consider this your job interview.”

The muzzle-flash flares too-bright in the dark, the gunshot deafening in the tiny kitchen. Suan’s glass shatters as it hits the floor. Neither shards nor milk reach Peppa’s boots.

* * *

The angled mirrors and bright lights of the fitting room at the Denver Continental give Peppa a good view of the yellowing bruises that march up and down her legs. Stripped down to her undergarments for the first of several training fittings, she spins around to examine the nastiest one on her thigh. From the back room, the newest Tailor apprentice to join the Continental enters, squints at her, and hands her a pair of unfinished pants to put on.

“Can I just say that I’m very glad your interview went well,” Peppa tells her, pointedly self-satisfied.

“You’re a menace,” Suan spits out a pin to complain. “A material sample would have sufficed.”

Peppa wrinkles her nose. “You’re no fun.”

Suan mocks jabbing her with a pin. Peppa yelps and laughs, making a show of it, then laughs harder when the Tailor pokes his head in. He takes one look at the two of them, mutters to himself, and ducks back out. At this, Suan covers her eyes and swears at the ceiling. “You are going to get me fired.”

Peppa’s not worried about Suan’s job security, however, unprofessional behavior or no. With the material of the blue-and-gold hoodie in hand, the bullet caught in its weave still warm, the Tailor had put Suan under the perpetual protection of the Continental. Whoever had called in her contract could get fucked, now and forever.

Yanking on her basted pants, Peppa grins at Suan. “You choose your name yet, Archetype?”

Suan’s slow smile lights her face like the dawn, and any lingering regrets Peppa might have had throwing herself into the profession evaporates. “Yeah,” Suan says, “I think I have.”

* * *

Peppa hops up onto the barstool next to Eliza’s and accepts the bartender’s cocktail offering.

“Nice suit,” Eliza says.

“Courtesy of Arachne,” Peppa replies, spearing one of her cherries with a tiny cocktail sword. Her second Archetype suit’s as black as the first, but the fine glimmer of gold catches the light when she shifts to smile around a cherry at her mentor. “She sends her regards, by the way.”

Whatever’s in her glass fizzes as Eliza sips. Quiet, sincere, she says, “Thank you.”

At this, Peppa turns and catches Eliza’s nearest hand. She squeezes and, after a moment, Eliza squeezes back. Peppa tells her, “This profession’s not entirely about the kill.”

“No,” Eliza says, studying her face. “No, you’re right. It’s not.”

She reaches and folds both of Peppa’s hands together as if in prayer, the weight of a coin between them. _Ex Unitae Vires._

Again she says, “Thank you.”

**Author's Note:**

>  _The road'll grind you down, give it time, but there are those who don't much mind_  
>  _Our corners start to curving 'til we shine_  
>  _Travelin' don't make me special, no, I am just one more lonely soul_  
>  _Tryin' hard to try hard to stay kind_  
>  \-- Highway Five by Marian Call


End file.
